By now you must be familiar with the next big thing after the avocado madness: chai latte. This (in many ways) hot beverage originates from India, but has just recently been taking every hipster urban coffeeshop and Instagram feed by storm. And to be honest, we totally get the obsession. Chai latte has the best of both worlds: it combines all the greatness of cappuccinos and tea in one. So what is all this current chai latte hysteria actually about?

Origin

Masala chai, as you can also call it to impress your neighbors at block parties, is a traditional tea from India. It contains a mixture of warming aromatic herbs and spices mixed with black tea and milk. The spices include cinnamon, cardamom, clove, anise, nutmeg, and ginger. According to ancient Indian philosophy, these spices are considered to be "sattvic," meaning calming, vitalizing and mentally clarifying.You can already imagine how women wearing colorful saris ever so gracefully pick these spices from luscious Indian fields. Meanwhile, the men occasionally poke their head out from behind a tree and try to woo the ladies by bursting into high-pitched singing and sensuous dancing. Or maybe we’ve just seen one too many Bollywood films.

Caffeine

Truth is, chai latte doesn't only look fabulous in pictures, it also has a lot of benefits. For instance, the black tea in chai contains caffeine, which is great to increase attention and focus. It comes especially handy during those never-ending work meetings about Agile, Scrumming, Sprinting, and Scrubbing the bathroom floor after ‘’someone’’ (we all know it was you, Shannon) missed the toilet bowl again. But mind you, a cup of chai contains only one-third of the caffeine in an average cup of coffee. This, however, makes it an excellent way to reduce your caffeine intake without having withdrawal symptoms and acting like a sweaty, crabby dick to everyone around you.

L-theanine

Furthermore, the caffeine in chai latte works differently due to the combination with l-theanine. L-theanine can be found in different quantities in all teas, and has a soothing effect on the nervous system. It causes the caffeine to be absorbed much slower, avoiding the infamous caffeine jitters and inducing a calm, controlled and focused state instead. So you can easily have a cup before bedtime, without having to worry about lying awake for hours while being reminded of every poor decision or embarrassing moment in your life. Like that one time you texted ‘’no sex tonight, it’s a bloodbath’’ to your boyfriend but realized it was a group chat with his parents.

To sum up: chai latte is healthy, delicious, increases your daily performance and even makes you look cool when spotted with in public. That motivated our decision to make our new Limited Plenny Shake a chai latte flavor, and it should motivate you to hop on the chai train with us too.